• We’ve no such information, say president’s aides
From Fred Itua, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari may carry out a minor cabinet reshuffle in the first quarter of 2017, Daily Sun has gathered. In the exercise, some ministers would swap positions, while some would be dropped and new ones nominated.
Already, two positions are up for grabs in the Federal Executive Council (FEC), following the death of James Ocholi, Minister of State for Labour and Productivity, who died in an auto crash in March and the exit of the Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed.
Mohammed is leaving Buhari’s cabinet to take up the post of Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations (UN).
Daily Sun gathered that the decision to reshuffle the cabinet is place some of the ministers in “appropriate ministries” and inject fresh blood in the cabinet.
It was learnt that those who will be affected would fall into two categories: “ministers wrongly placed” and those that have “shown lack of capacity in the areas of deployment.”
Sources said that the ministers who would leave the cabinet cut across the geopolitical zones, an indication that the new names soon to make their ways into the Senate will also come from the different zones.
If the reshuffle goes as planned, that would be the first time President Buhari would tinker with his cabinet since it was constituted in November 2015.
When contacted, Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, said he had no information on any planned cabinet change and could, therefore, not verify or deny it.
Similarly, the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, told Daily Sun he could not immediately verify the claims. He, however, promised to furnish the newspaper with more information, as events unfold.